CaptainMarion E. Carl

Marine Corps hero of Midway and Guadalcanal

The first Marine ace was a World War II pilot, Captain
Marion E. Carl of Marine Fighter Squadron 223, VMF-223.

Carl would eventually shoot down 18.5 Japanese aircraft,
achieve several postwar
performance records in early jet aircraft, lead a Marine amphibious
landing
ashore in Vietnam and retire as a major general.

Midway

As a member of the ill-fated VMF-221 during
the
Battle of Midway, he earned his first Navy Cross while leading an
attack against
a vastly superior number of Japanese bombers and fighter aircraft. At
5:34
A.M. on June 4th, a Navy Catalina flying boat spotted the Japanese
attack
force and radioed: "Many enemy planes heading Midway." These were the
carrier
based fighters and bombers which were to "soften up" the island before
the planned invasion. There were twenty-eight Marine fighter planes on
Midway under the command of
Major Floyd B. Parks. Nineteen of these were old
Brewster F2A Buffalo fighters. Immediately Major Parks took off
with
seven Buffalos and five Wildcats to intercept the enemy attacking
force.
The rest of the fighters were ordered up too, but held in reserve.

When Parks first spotted the enemy formation at 14,000
feet over Midway, he saw over 100 fighter planes and bombers. The Zero
escort was beneath
the bombers, apparently not expecting fighter opposition. The Marine
fighters
peeled off and roared into the Vals, all guns blazing. Several of the
Japanese
bombers were hit, and dropped away toward the sea. But then the Zeros
saw
the Marine fighter planes and climbed to meet the Wildcats and sluggish
Buffalos. The Marine pilots didn't have a chance. The dancing Zeros cut
up the brave defenders. Not only were the marines heavily outnumbered,
but their planes could not match the performance of the Japanese
fighters.

In a vicious dogfight the Americans lost plane after plane.
In Parks' group only two pilots survived. One of them was Captain
Marion
Carl. He destroyed one Zero on his first pass, but as he climbed for
altitude
again, other Zeros got on his tail. He nosed over, rammed everything to
the firewall, and pulled away. A Wildcat could at least outdive a Zero.
In this way Captain Carl managed to escape. On his way back to Midway
he made another
attack on three Zeros below him and sent one down, burning and out of
control.

The rest of the Marine fighter planes joined Major Parks'
fight, but to no avail. After the "all clear," the Midway radio called:
"Fighters land, refuel by divisions...." No fighters landed. Then came
the call, "All fighters land and reservice." only ten planes came back,
and only two would ever fly again. It was the heaviest loss the Marines
suffered in a single air battle during the entire war. One of our
pilots
said bitterly afterwards that the Buffalo "should be in Miami as a
training
plane." Capt. Carl flew one of only two planes sent up in the second
defensive
sortie from Midway.

Guadalcanal

Two months after Midway, on August 7, 1942, Marines stormed
ashore in the Solomons during the first American offensive of World War
2. The
ensuing six-month campaign for Guadalcanal became a contest to take the
island's airfield, which the Marines named Henderson Field for a pilot
killed at Midway. The code name for Guadalcanal was Cactus; thus the
collection
of squadrons, American and Allied, that rose from Henderson Field to do
battle each day was called the Cactus Air Force. While the story of the
Cactus Air Force is a tale of inter-service cooperation and dependency,
the stars of the struggling group were the Marine fighter and dive- and
torpedo-bomber squadrons. VMF-223 and VMF-224 were the first fighter
squadrons
to arrive, flying the F4F-4 Wildcat. Fighting from August to November,
the pilots of these and other units that followed eventually turned
back
the Japanese bombing offensive. Several of these Marine fighter pilots
became aces, and nine Marine aviators received the Medal of Honor for
their
service or for specific missions during the Solomons
campaign.

All these men received the Medal of Honor for their service
at Guadalcanal.

Along with some other survivors of Midway's VMF-221, Capt. Carl was
assigned to VMF-223, and headed to Guadalcanal on August 20 in the very
first group of American fliers to land there. Four days later, during
the Battle of the Eastern Solomons, VMF-223 intercepted six torpedo
planes and fifteen Zeros from the Ryujo. They caught the
Japanese planes between Malaita and Florida at 9,000 feet, and shot
down all the torpedo planes, while the Zeros got three Americans.
Marion Carl claimed two torpedo planes and one Zero. He became an ace
on 26 August 1942, when he was jumped while
coming in for a landing at Henderson Field. He cranked up his wheels
and
engaged the audacious Zero over the beach - exploding his quarry before
hundreds of witnesses.

During an aerial fight off the coast of Guadalcanal on September 9,
he
was forced to bail out of his shot-up Wildcat and was losing his battle
to swim ashore against the tide, when he was picked up by friendly
natives
in a canoe. After five days with the natives, he finally made his way
back
to his base. General Geiger, the Marine air commander, informed Captain
Carl that Major Smith, his rival ace, had just shot down his 16th
plane, while Carl only had 12. "What are we going to do about that?"
the General asked. "Goddammit, General, ground him for five days!" On
October 1, Admiral Nimitz awarded Carl, Galer, and Smith Navy Crosses.
But the grinding attrition continued; two days later, Carl led up the
remaining four planes of -223, shooting down a Zero, as did two others.
During the period from late August through November 1942,
the Marine pilots faced almost daily combat, and some of them, like
Carl and Smith ran up large scores. He returned to the United States on
21 October 1942.

Second Tour

In July 1943, now Major Carl left San Francisco on his
second tour
of combat duty, as C.O. of VMF-223. This tour took him through the
Hawaiian Islands to New Hebrides, Vella Lavella in the Solomon Islands,
Guadalcanal and Emirau. His squadron played a key role in the aerial
reduction of Rabaul in early 1944. He scored two more kills while
flying Corsairs.

In November
1944, he returned from the Pacific area, having earned a total of two
Navy
Crosses, three Distinguished Flying Crosses, and 13 Air Medals. Next,
he
was assigned duty with Flight Test, Naval Air Test Center, Patuxent
River,
Maryland. On V-J Day, 14 August 1945, he was promoted to Lieutenant
Colonel.

After World War Two

After the war, he was the first Marine Corps pilot to land a jet
aircraft,
an F-80 Shooting Star, aboard an aircraft carrier on 1 November 1946.
Carl became a Navy test pilot, setting a world speed record of 651 mph
on Aug. 25, 1947, at Muroc Field, now Edwards Air Force Base, in
California. But his fame was fleeting and soon forgotten. Chuck Yeager, the Air Force's top test
pilot, wrested away the title of world's fastest human by breaking the
sound barrier two months later, also at Muroc. He flew a Bell X-1
rocket plane at Mach 1.07 -- 700 mph -- on Oct. 14. In 1953, Carl set a
world altitude record of 83,235 feet and two years later, as CO of
VMJ-1, he was deployed to Taiwan for classified operations. They flew
F2H-2P photo Banshee aircraft for reconnaissance missions over China.

Sadly, General Carl was shot and killed by an intruder in his
Oregon home in June, 1998. He was 83 years old. (I have often
reflected on the tragic irony of this. Here's a man, a great man, if
you will, who had "fought the good fight" for his country, a man who
had met in battle and prevailed against the best fliers of the Japanese
Empire, a man who served his country his entire life, and then, in his
well-deserved rest, was cut down by some worthless punk. It's just too
sad. -- SS) In recent years there has been a small, but dedicated
effort to recognize Carl's Heroism with a posthumous Medal of Honor.
Surely he deserved it.

(Osprey Aircraft of the Aces, No 3) Covers both Marine Corps
and Navy aces that flew the Wildcat, in the early phases of the war, at
Guadalcanal, in the continuing Solomons campaign, and also the pilots
flying the FM-2, a later version of the Wildcat flown from escort
carriers. Also a section on the British Fleet Air Arm's use of the
Wildcat ('Martlet' to them).

Highlights of the book include sections on Midway,
Guadalcanal, a profile of Joe Foss, and a wartime history of VMF-121.
There are tables of Wildcat aces for: the year 1942, the squadron
VMF-121, the year 1943, and the FM-2 pilots. I'm a sucker for group
photos, and the picture of VF-10, 'The Grim Reapers' standing in front
of their winged skeleton scorboard is priceless.